KnitMe

Here finally is my little

Here finally is my little hank of handspun superwash merino.

This was made from 4 ounces of top that Denise S. sent to me just because she wanted it to have a home. It put me through a lot of trouble! I spun up two huge bobbins of nice thin singles, then went to ply and the singles kept breaking.

After tossing a couple of handfuls into the trash, I appealed to Fibertraditions for help. The consensus was that I needed to put more twist into the single before trying to ply it. So, Friday morning Emily and I had a nice outing to visit Mama Liz and Morgen, and add twist on Liz's Jensen wheel. Emily played with Morgen and tried to befriend Liz's many cats, Liz knitted, and I spun. That was when I found out how much yardage I'd really spun! it took almost an hour to move one bobbinfull of yarn from my lazy kate to the Jensen.

So, I brought home one Jensen bobbin and my own other bobbin and added twist to the second bobbin on my Kromski. I then started plying, and it went well until the drive band frayed apart and broke. Eek. The partly plyed yarn had to sit overnight till I got some advice on how to make a new band, from Fibertraditions again as well as from New Voyager, the very helpful distributor of Kromskis in the US. Finally though, it's finished, and it's about 450 yards of light sockweight yarn. I'm already started on a large swatch (a sock). Whew!

To add a little more color to the page, here's a rather pinkish photo of the Jamiesons felted shoulder bag I made last month. The pattern is in the Jamiesons #3 book and I used the called-for Chunky Shetland. It's a lovely flexible velvety fabric, a very nice little bag.

Happy New Year everyone.

PS Don't forget you can get pretty Pink Tea goodies at the PinkTeaSoiree Cafepress store... (No markups or profits, just at-cost prices.)

PPS Here's a quiz I found when I visited Mama Liz this morning.

Prudence

I've made great progress on

I've made great progress on my Ljod sweater (from the new Elsebeth Lavold book), mostly because I can knit away on it while at the same time coaching Emily on her computer toys or watching her take a bath - very simple knitting! Also, I'm stalled on my Poetry sweater sleeves right now and this project is one of the beneficiaries.

This is the back - it isn't quite as narrow as it looks, the sides are curling in a little. I can already tell this will be a favorite sweater to wear. The Silky Wool yarn makes a lovely almost velvety fabric and is very soft.

The shaping is very elegant - you decrease to the waist at both edges as well as each side of the vertical purl lines, then increase out again in the same manner, but THEN you do some more increases only BETWEEN the vertical purl lines. To me this will make the waist look thinner, it very slightly broadens the center panel across the shoulders and enhances the narrowness at the waist. We'll see!

Also there is a very small amount of short-rowing at the shoulders to very slightly slant the line of the shoulder seam downward away from the neck. Her instructions for executing a short-row-wrap are clear and the pictures really help - this is a maneuver I've always had trouble with.

There are various errors and unclarities in this book, I keep hearing, and I've printed and saved off her errata from her site as well as a posting from an online list about another pattern in the book. This one so far is very clear - I did find one error, on page 18 top of the second column - it should not say 'chart row 0' because at this point you are on a right side row and are working chart row 1. An email to Elsebeth confirmed this is a mistake in the pattern.

Gauge seems to be a big issue with this yarn - the recommended gauge is 22x30 = 4 inches on size 6 needles. When I swatched with size 5 I got gauge exactly, till I washed the swatch at which point I was getting more like 20 1/2 or 21 stitches to 4 inches (the row gauge did not change with washing). So, I'm knitting this pattern on sizes 2 and 4 needles, which means the pieces are going to be a little too small until they are washed and blocked. This is a little nerve-wracking!

But, on the whole, I am really loving making this pattern and can't wait to wear the finished product. No doubt this will be done before the Poetry sweater.

Prudence

Sanquhar Gloves

I finally had time to make a scan of my Sanquhar Gloves. They were so much fun to knit and I've enjoyed wearing them. They are surprisingly warm, too. I changed the pattern a bit by starting the little finger lower to better fit my hand. The glove on the left has the gusset between the little finger and ring finder where I picked up the stitches for the hand. The first glove ( shown on the right) has the gusset on the other side of the ring finger making the middle finger and ring finger gussets come together. The second glove is a better fit. lI'm getting ready to start on my Mohter's pair, and hope to get them finished before Christmas. Hers should be perfect.

Judy

Poetry comes along

We had 4 inches of snow overnight last night, so instead of working today I concentrated on finishing up the body of my Poetry in Stitches sweater. This photo conceals a multitude of puckers.

The shoulders aren't bound off together yet because I need to machine stitch the steeks first.

This pattern has the most interesting shoulder finishing I've ever done. This is a closeup of the top of the front at one shoulder.

To produce this shoulder effect, one knits 4 rows of stockinette, and on row 2 (a purl row) one uses a size 7 needle, returning to the size 4 needle on row 3. Row 5 is a standard picot row K2tog YO across. Rows 6 and 7 are more stockinette. Then, for row 8, you run a size 1 needle carefully into all the top loops of that slightly baggy row done on the size 7 needle, and purl one stitch from each needle together to pop up the spiky picot edge. Then, you graft or bind off that shoulder to the back which is plain.

I can't wait to see what this looks like when bound off and worn. I am afraid I will feel like a triceratops.

I just couldn't face starting a sleeve tonight so I worked a little on my Legends of the Shetland Seas which is moving faster as I know the pattern better. I hope to have the center panel done in the near future.